Big Crab Orchard Site

Big Crab Orchard Site, near Tazewell in southwestern Virginia, preserves the location of the Crab Orchard tract, one of the first European settlement sites in Southwest Virginia. Patented in 1750, the tract later became associated with Fort Witten, or Witten’s Fort, and Pisgah Church. Ownership passed through Morris Griffith and William Ingles before Thomas Witten Sr. settled there about 1768. Its significance rests on this early frontier history and on the archaeological evidence connected to the region’s first years of European settlement. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and remains an important surviving place from that era.

Virginia · United States